Victoria not likely to lose its mantle as the state most progressive

Farrah Tomazin

LABOR loyalists used to boast that John Brumby ran the most socially progressive government in the country. Today, Brumby's political life hangs by a thread and Labor is all but defeated.

But would the arrival of the first Coalition government in more than a decade signal the return of conservative politics to Victoria? Not quite - although at first blush it might seem so.

Among the highest-profile casualties of Saturday's 6 per cent anti-Labor swing was Mount Waverley MP Maxine Morand, the cabinet minister who took the lead to decriminalise abortion in Victoria. A former nurse, she had also called for Parliament to debate voluntary euthanasia and had declared her support for gay marriage.

Other progressive-thinking Labor MPs have also fallen. Cabinet secretary Tony Lupton - another supporter of same-sex marriage and abortion-law reform - lost his inner city seat of Prahran, and by last night, parliamentary secretary Rob Hudson - a former social policy adviser to premier Steve Bracks and the one-time chief of the Victorian Council of Social Service - looked set to lose in Bentleigh, as his opponent's lead doubled.

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The Greens, too, were casualties of Saturday's electoral shift, failing in their bid to win a coveted spot in Parliament's lower house, their primary vote only marginally better than the 2006 state poll.

But that does not mean Victoria will suddenly lose its self-proclaimed mantle as the country's most progressive state.

First, Labor in Victoria sits in the middle ground and Baillieu leads a moderate party. Second, Labor might have lost some of its progressive MPs but it still has a host of others.

And while the Greens might not have reached the heights of their success at the federal election, the Labor candidates who fended them off are some of the most left-leaning you are likely find: Bronwyn Pike in the seat of Melbourne; Richard Wynne in the seat of Richmond; and Yarra mayor Jane Garrett, in Brunswick.

While the Greens claimed to be the flag-bearers of modern progressive policies, the successful Labor campaign to prevent the Greens storming the inner Melbourne heartland was based on a so-called ''values'' campaign, in which Labor emphasised its credentials on social justice, climate change and public housing.

Finally, there's Baillieu. He is as ''small-l'' Liberal as they get. Baillieu is no Tony Abbott, even if he does wear speedos.

Baillieu's Coalition did not seek to vote down the Brumby government's climate change legislation, which committed Victoria to an ambitious target of reducing emissions by 20 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020.

The Liberal leader voted in Parliament in favour of abortion-law reform and stem-cell research. He is opposed to gay marriage - like Brumby - but has voted to remove discrimination against same-sex couples.

Baillieu is from the moderate faction of the Liberal Party, is a supporter of the arts and has a proud history of supporting Indian and Chinese migrants.